


lost runs

by spoke



Category: Watership Down - Richard Adams
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 09:04:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4700189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/pseuds/spoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>For all we don't see him very long, I really liked Silverweed. And since I've had a personal headcanon of him working for the Black Rabbit for awhile now, well. </p>
<p>I see the Black Rabbit's Owsla as being given something like the choice the crew of the Flying Dutchman in Pirates of the Carribean gets - not under Davy Jones, but Will Turner. A chance to put things off, or come to terms with yourself, or help other people maybe, before you move on.</p>
<p>And wow but the rabbits in the snared warren had Issues.</p></blockquote>





	lost runs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luminare_ardua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luminare_ardua/gifts).



_Sometimes a good storyteller may find a place; or a seer, or intuitive rabbit._

~~~

The sun had gone down when Thistle woke on the outcrop, and the stars were scattered above him. The sounds of strange insects rose from the grass around him, and the woods were closer than he thought they should be, though he couldn’t be certain. The stones held the memory of the sun’s warmth, but not of why he went to sleep in the open. He turned to his companion, on the verge of asking him whether he remembered how they’d gotten here, but thought better of it at the expression on the young buck’s face. He was far too young to be here in any case. 

Cautiously, he slipped off the rock and headed away from the woods, meaning to make his way back to the warren. The young buck watched him until he’d almost gone out of sight, ears switching back for a moment before he followed. The grass was high and thick, and darker the further they moved into it. It was suspiciously quiet as well, the strange insects making the only sounds he could hear, now that he thought about it. 

It took rising on his hind legs before he realized the grass was well over his head. It rose nearly man-high around him, and no grass near his home warren ever got that high. He couldn’t be anywhere near home, but where was he then? If he knew what direction he’d run from the warren, then...

It was the first memory he’d recovered since leaving the rocks, and he jumped and dashed further into the impossible grass before he could stop himself. He could hear the young buck following, and that made him run faster; surely he’d left the warren for some reason. No one had gone with him. It wasn’t safe. he wasn’t safe; he had run and run and run, for safety. 

Not his own. 

The hlessil mustn’t be safe near him either, then. He had to keep going, and he never tired, though the grass got taller and thicker until he could barely move through it. The insects grew louder as well, and there was a strange vibration to their cries, as if they were closer than they should be. Soon he ran among small rocks that in their turn got larger and larger, and the grass began to thin out, though he was down among the stalks to the very roots.

He finally checked, not out of exhaustion, but because he saw an insect as large as a fox. It was impossible to tell what it was going to do, the flat stone of its face showing no sign of emotion that Thistle could understand. “It’s elil you know.” the hlessil said behind him, as calm as if they were at morning silflay. “Everything is at this size. I wish you hadn’t gone this way.”

“Was there another way to go?” Thistle asked, still confused by the emptiness where he knew memory should be. Maybe that was why he was so calm, even with giant insects and strange bucks about who didn’t seem upset by them. 

“Nowhere at all would have been better, even if everywhere is possible here.” The stranger said, looking with some interest at the grass. “It does seem like a good idea, to be so small nothing could find you. Except that there isn’t any such size, and as for running in the opposite direction, well. That can be worse.” 

Hearing the thoughts he didn’t know he’d had laid out so plainly, Thistle startled and crouched down staring at the stranger. His voice had gotten darker as he spoke, and Thistle shivered as he wondered what had happened to rabbits that went in this other direction. Maybe the biggest animals there were had some sort of elil. Maybe they became elil. 

At which thought mist began to rise around them, twisting and curling through the blades of grass like running water. The insect hopped and vanished completely, and the stranger turned startled eyes on Thistle just before he vanished. Or everything vanished as Thistle returned to his proper size, and who could really tell? 

Possibly the stranger, but Thistle was relieved he wasn’t there. Everything might still be strange, but he only realized with the other rabbit gone that he hadn’t liked him much. It had felt like being near a bored cat, really. It wasn’t trying to kill you just now, but it could change its mind at any moment. These trees might be completely new, but at least they didn’t feel like cats.

They didn’t feel like much of anything else, either. Which brought him back to the problem he’d noticed before he’d even seen the stranger, and ignored in favor of running: nothing felt like anything. Or everything felt like nothing? He wasn’t hungry, tired, angry, or happy even though he ought to be, having apparently managed to escape the stranger. The leaves on the trees were shaped like rabbits, and the short grass that grew between them smelled like flowers instead of grass, and it didn’t matter. The wind moving between the leaves sounded almost like words, and he moved into the forest slowly, trying to understand them. 

He hardly twitched when he saw the stranger in front of him again. He’d been everywhere else, why not here? “Is there some reason you’ve been following me?” Thistle asked, trying to sound annoyed. Hearing his own voice, he thought he sounded tired; maybe more tired than he had ever been in life. 

And that thought, somehow reflected in the stranger’s eyes, finally drove it home. “I’m dead aren’t I.”

The leaves had drifted down around the stranger, who was examining them with the first trace of interest he’d really shown. “You’ve gotten a bit lost, too. I don’t think _I’ve_ seen this place before.” 

“And you aren’t the Black Rabbit.” 

The stranger’s ears flicked back flat for a moment. “No, I certainly am not. I am a member of his Owsla, as it happens. Sometimes,” and the stranger paused as if considering his words, “if a death is unusually frightening, or a rabbit is unusually sensitive, he doesn’t end up going where he ought to. He might not see who has come for him, or he might see and not understand, and make a dash that quite takes him out of the ordinary runs for such things. Well, Inle hasn’t the time to be hunting down everyone who bolts, and I spent rather a lot of time out here even when I was alive. When I died, well.” 

Thistle is rooted to the spot, listening to this rabbit speak so calmly about the Black Rabbit. “Am I in trouble, then? I mean... what happens now?” 

Getting eye rolled by the stranger isn’t half so insulting as it might have been, now. “No, you’re _lost._ And handling it rather better than most rabbits I have to chase down, I might add. As for what comes next, I couldn’t really say - I sort of stayed, you see. And sort of not, though I suppose it will all come to the same thing in the end.” 

Thistle decided he didn’t want to know which end the stranger meant, so he ignored that part. “You can get me un-lost then?”

He looked pleased, at least. “That is my job! If you’ll follow me - my name’s name Silverweed by the way...” 

~~~

_'You must understand, El-ahrairah, that I have no wish to make you suffer. I am not one of the Thousand.'_

**Author's Note:**

> For all we don't see him very long, I really liked Silverweed. And since I've had a personal headcanon of him working for the Black Rabbit for awhile now, well. 
> 
> I see the Black Rabbit's Owsla as being given something like the choice the crew of the Flying Dutchman in Pirates of the Carribean gets - not under Davy Jones, but Will Turner. A chance to put things off, or come to terms with yourself, or help other people maybe, before you move on.
> 
> And wow but the rabbits in the snared warren had Issues.


End file.
